Red Roses
by Kali Cephirot
Summary: Christian, after Satine's death, how life continues. Or not.


Notes: Vaguely inspired on "A World of Fragile Things" Bye She's a Star.

Nothing's mine.

_Red roses, my bittersweet delirium.   
Red roses, the pleasure and the hope.  
I imagined I had you again, like before.  
Drowning in dew, all night long.  
Wait for me. No, don't come close yet.  
I called for you in the darkness._

Alejandra Guzmán, Rosas rojas 'Red roses'

**Rosas rojas.**

The world has changed into a spectrum of gray, black and red after your death. He doesn't see any other color, he can't make them. Sometimes he believes it's because he feels death, hopeless and with a passion that he can't give to anyone else. Besides, the only red he can see is crismon red, blood red, as careful design in white and hidden handkerchiefs. He fights to capture any other color, but not even the blue allows to be catched.

The Green Fairy - irony of the name, of course- has stopped singing that the hills are alive with the sound of music. Instead she cries that this pain is just to real and that there are things that time cannot erase. Christian drinks with her, to your honour. He has very interesting conversations with her, and maybe you should worry, but it is good that he talks with someone, even if that someone is a fragment of his imagination. He doesn't speak with anyone else, not even you.

The sky is broken, and now it's never going to be a ballroom. Sometimes you think that it never was. It is so dark now... you miss the stars. He looks with a scowl to the window. Eiffel tower seems like a dagger, and the moon is a sadic smile for everyone that suffers. He wonders if the stars were ever bright, burning hopes, or if they were always white blood tears. You do remember. There's a strange tightening were your heart would be beating if you were still alive. You'd cry with him if you could, but you can only wish you could.

He feels his life is broken beyond repair, and he just got twenty six last week. He never says come what may anymore, and he laughs bitterly when he thinks that you have stopped loving him, because you're already dead. Your promise of love was until your dying day, and you're already gone, while he still has to carry his love.

You should have told him that it wasn't until your dying day, that it was beyond that, forever and ever. Then, at least, he wouldn't feel lonely. He could at least pretend that he thinks that you are at his side, and not in the sky, where he thinks you're the most beautiful angel that has ever existed. You want to tell him that even heaven is hell without his sweet love. You wish you could tell him that you're always at his side, always, always.

He won't ask for one, just one night to love, because the dawn is moking after that short night. He's been told that is better to have loved and lost than never loving at all, but he can't convince himself that it is true.

Yes, he wouldn't chage those - days? months? seconds? - few moments for anything, but there's a whole life of those moments missing. And yes, he wasn't alive until he loved you, but he also died while doing so. Your death was sweet, you died loving and in peace, he thinks. But his death is going to be long and cruel. He's going to die loving, but alone.

When it snows on Sundays, he goes to the Cementary. Above the white snow that covers your grave, he paciently writes his name with his best calligraphy, and then he sits there, holding the stone as if it was your body while he held it during so many nights, sweet and warm and alive, so very different than it was at Opening Night, and he thinks that he should be in there, because when you loose your heart, you die. And if your blood has his and his heart was yours, he should be down there with you, and not alone in the cold.

He always wakes up when his arms hurt and when he realizes that no, he hasn't stopped breathing. Again. You have been besides him, trying to feel him again.

He always gives you roses on those visits. He doesn't know why, but roses do have their color. He always take a dozen of white ones and a red one. Thirteen for luck, although he has stopped believing in that. He breaks mirrors and the salt is cried from his eyes, and nothing happens. He's starting to believe his bad luck is living.

Carefully, he arranges the roses in your grave. The red one is always at the center.

He traces your name with cold fingers, and he thinks it shouldn't mean anything, and yet it's everything.

Satine. Just a name, a clothe... but it is so much more that just six simple letters can't express it. Shakespeare was wrong. A name does matter and he knows it because he can't erase yours. What is a name? Well, it is cherry-red lips, scarlet curls, foxy smile, and eyes which he all to cruely remembers that are blue. What is it in a name? Thousands of kisses that were never rained on your body, hundreds of weeks waking up, arms wrapped around each other, making love. Would you be the same with another name? Yes... but you were Satine, and your name says so much...

He listens about how he is young. Life continues, he will forget you. When he is left alone he laughs bitterly again, and drinks absynthe. He writes to you letters that he burns as soon as they are in the envelope. You read them over his shoulder, a part of you wishing that he could tell you to not cheat, to le thim write in peace and after he will show you... but it never happends. You whisper I-love-you-forever-and-ever-you-will-stay-in-my-heart, but he never listens.

He doesn't know if he should shout, cry or laugh when people say that he will find someone else. The Green Fairy asks, in his name, for you to take him in your arms and take him where you are.

If you could, you would. He says _"toujours amour, _fly me up to where you are beyond a distant star, I wish upon to night to see yor smile, if only for a while to know your name, so take me where you are._"_

He doesn't know it yet, but tomorrow he's going to write again. You'll smile and you'll whisper the things he let slip. You'll whisper to him that the world is going to be bright and colorful again.

He won't believe you.


End file.
